To Model the Assembly of Thin Parts in Composite Material

During the past 2o years, researchers proposed several methodologies mainly based on finite element method (FEM) to solve tolerance analysis problems of compliant part assemblies. Tolerance analysis defines a procedure to estimate the resultant variation of the assembly geometry, given the tolerances associated with individual components and the functional relationship between the individual components and the assembly requirements. This aspect is particularly relevant when parts made of composite material are considered, as the research emphasis to date has been on the design and fabrication of composite parts, with considerably less attention to cost and quality issues in their subsequent assembly. The first aim of this work is to present and use the most widely used method to solve the tolerance analysis of assemblies. This method is the method of influence of coefficients (MIC) and estimates the geometric deviations of an assembly due to the compliance of the material, the geometric tolerances of components, and the fastening of the parts. The second aim is to propose and use an approach in order to reduce the simulation time involved by MIC. The computational efficiency to simulate compliant assemblies is an important aspect in the tolerance analysis problems. This aspect is strongly correlated to the discretization of the bodies inside FEM software. Finally, to verify the effectiveness of the new proposed method, in comparison with the methods of the literature, an assembly made up of thin parts in composite material joined by adhesive was taken into account and solved by both methods. The new method halves the simulation time compared to the literature approaches.